A Stranger Death (Ch 9)

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Chapter 9

True to his word, Darren arrived at Sarah's place about fifteen minutes after her mother had left for work. He even came prepared with his spade. "I didn't want to use your Dad's in case he noticed afterward that it was dirty and wondered how it got that way."

Sarah showed him where the body had lain in the dip, and he got to work. It was hard going despite the fact that the ground was fairly soft, so he took frequent breaks to catch his breath and try to cool down. Sarah kept up a steady supply of cold drinks while also trying to encourage him to keep going as quickly as possible. She didn't know what shifts her father, and Robert were on, so didn't know what time to expect either of them home.

When he had dug down a couple of feet, they were starting to wonder if they were on a wild goose chase as there was no sign at all of anything suspicious. Perhaps the guy hadn't been digging in the ground after all, and the dip in the earth had already been there. After all, if he had been digging, what happened to his spade when he keeled over?

However, just as they were about to give up there was a dull clunk as Darren's spade hit something hard. Trying to hide his excitement, he carefully cleared away the dirt around the object to reveal two small metal boxes, each a little larger than a matchbox. He removed them carefully from the hole in the ground and then probed the area they had come from to see if there were any more, but there were only those two.

The boxes proved to be impossible to open using just their bare hands, being well and truly stuck closed as if they had been in the ground for some time. Still fearing discovery, they quickly filled the hole back in again, trying to disguise the fact that it had been dug up. They took the two boxes back to Darren's farm to work on them.

Using a screwdriver and a variety of tools, Darren was finally able to force the lid off one of the boxes. They were amazed when they saw what was inside the box.

"I'm no jeweller," said Darren, "but if I'm not mistaken those look as if they could be diamonds. There would appear to be around a hundred or more of them in that box. If the other box is the same, then they must be worth many, many thousands between them."

Sarah felt distinctly queasy when she saw all those diamonds. When they managed to open the second box, as expected, it contained much the same contents.

"What do we do now Darren? I'm worried. What have we got ourselves into? Perhaps they're the proceeds of a robbery or something like that. No-one buries a small fortune in diamonds just for the sheer hell of it."

"Well," said Darren with a look of excitement on his face, "before you say that we should hand everything over to the police, why don't we see where these boxes lead us? There is a manufacturer's name and number on the bottom, and these aren't the sort of box that you can just buy over the counter. They look as though they would need to be ordered specially. Let's check them out on the internet, see if we can find out where they are based."

It didn't take Darren long to get the information they were after. "The company that makes them has its headquarters in Exeter. Perhaps if we make inquiries there, we can find out who they were ordered by and then we'll know who the diamonds belong to. You never know if we're lucky there might be a hefty reward for their return."

"You've got me worried now Darren. Don't forget that this is probably a murder enquiry now. The police won't take kindly to anyone interfering with the case and the evidence. I don't want to end up in trouble with the police, not to mention that Robert is a police officer and the fact that it would put him in a bad light."

"I know what you're saying Sarah, but think what we could do with any reward money. It could be just what we need to get married and set up home together. You could finally leave home and get away from your mother. Why don't we give it a couple of days to see what we can come up with? Then if we are getting nowhere, we can always hand these boxes in to the police and say that we've only just found them."

"OK then," agreed Sarah reluctantly. She had to confess that the chance of getting a reward and the difference it could make for them was sorely tempting. If that reward was just 10% of their value…

"But only on the condition that we only hold off telling the police for a couple of days. Then we go to them and tell them everything."

"Agreed. I know you've got work tomorrow, so I'll go into Exeter and see what I can find out about these boxes. In the meantime see if you can get any more information from your brother about how far the police have got. Don't worry too much Sarah. I'm sure we can get to the bottom of all this."

Chapter 9 will be posted tomorrow. Follow me to make sure that you don't miss an episode.